What Were You Before
Day 1
1. What were you before you became an author? Did this
influence your choices as a writer?
My traveling life began at the age of six months, when
my family moved from upstate New York to North Carolina. From there we went to
Maryland, and four years later were winging halfway across the world to Turkey.
When I was ten, we took the Queen Mary across the Atlantic to France. After two
and a half years in Paris, we drove through France, Andorra, and Spain to
Gibraltar and Morocco.
I once counted up the number of significant moves in my
life…and stopped at twenty-five. I have lived or traveled in Europe, the Middle
East, Africa, the US, Central America, and South America.
A big chunk of my life after college was as a perennial
student. I hold a Bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, a diploma in Arabic
Studies from the American University in Cairo, and Masters in both Anthropology
and in Library Science from the University of Chicago. When I finally sloughed off the bonds of
academia, I spent thirty years in Washington, D.C. as a Congressional staff
assistant, speechwriter, librarian, editor, policy wonk, non-profit director,
and parent. I worked for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of the Interior,
in public and academic library systems, and at the Torpedo Factory Art Center
in Alexandria, Virginia.
All of these experiences have insinuated themselves into my
books—thirteen as of this date and counting.
2. Are you genre specific or general? I don’t mean major
genres but subdivisions or romance, mystery or paranormal.
I write romantic suspense and cozy mystery (defined as
an Agatha Christie- style puzzle story with an amateur sleuth, as opposed to a
hard-boiled detective or police procedural). I started with quite spicy (not
erotic) romantic suspense, but bodies kept cropping up, so I finally gave in
and accepted that my stories had become cozy mystery with a hefty helping of
one- to two-flame romance.
3. What is your latest release?
Wild Rose Press, October 30, 2019
Cozy mystery
442 p.
Rating: Spicy (PG13)
She is drawn to
Emory Andrews, the ornithologist, a gruff, big man with a secret past, until
his beautiful ex-wife shows up. More murders, more
secrets, more mysteries ensue, all in the deeply romantic, sizzling jungle.
4. What are you working on now?
Ooh, ooh. I have three different books at three
different stages. I just signed a contract for Mrs. Spinney’s Secret,
out some time this year. Here’s the story:
What do you do when Hollywood wants to make a movie in your
tiny Maine village? Cassidy Beauvoir, chairman of the board of overseers of
Amity Landing, is ready to throw the bums out until she meets Jasper MacEwan,
the director of American Waterloo: the Rout of the Penobscot Expedition. Their
budding romance is threatened by a series of deadly incidents. Are they
directed at the movie crew? Or is the target local Mainers?
As the two search for answers, the trail leads them to
long-held secrets of the worst naval defeat of the American
Revolution—including betrayal, murder, and a lost hoard of English gold.
And, I’ve finished the first draft of a romantic
suspense/mystery set on Chincoteague Island entitled The Wishing Tree.
Will the wind whip her token from the wishing tree and make
her wish come true? Addison hopes it will bring back her new husband, lost at
sea, to Chincoteague. Instead, she meets a mysterious man, whose every word may
be a lie. She is soon embroiled in espionage and defection, all related to the
top secret science station across the sound at Wallops Island. Is Nick the
spy—or is his brother? Who killed the Belarusian scientist who sought asylum?
How can she trust the man who is slowly claiming her heart if his story keeps
shifting?
5. Did your reading choices influence your choice of a
writing career?
I read anything and everything when I was growing up. My
favorites were in British literature: the Brontës, Waugh, Wilde, Harding. If
anything were labeled a classic I’d devour it. I figured, if it’s considered a
classic, it’s got to be good. So I read Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann, Joseph
Conrad and Fitzgerald. I tried modern fiction (I call it modern angst) and
found it exceedingly wanting in persuasive, charismatic—or even
likable—characters or believable plots.
6. Where can we find you?
Linked in: www.linkedin.com/in/msspencerauthor
5 comments:
Thanks so much for hosting me here at the Eclectic Writer. I hope your readers enjoy the interview and want to read my books!
Great Interview. I too moved often. D. V. 🦉
Did you? Military brat or other? My father was an academic so had all sorts of jobs.
What an interesting life you've had. Do the classics like Wilde show up in your own writing?
Boy I wish I had Wilde's incredible talent! Because of my reading, my earlier writing was much more "English"--a little formal with overly complex sentences. I've tried to let it flow a little more naturally because that's what readers are used to. But (as my editor will attest) I like to sneak in a few less common words here and there :)
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